You Are Not Alone

Dad and I went out to dinner last night to celebrate my 52nd birthday. While it might seem like going out to dinner would be a nice break from the regular meal planning/fixing/washing-up routine that makes up most of my evenings, it’s often more of a chore. First, it means I miss my beloved evening vodka gimlet. If I’m driving (and I always am, these days), then I hold myself to a single glass of wine with dinner – Dad and I went round and round over his drinking and driving too much for me to allow him the satisfaction of an “I told you so” now that I’m behind the wheel. Second, it means eating even earlier than we usually do – for some reason, though we never eat before 7 pm when dining at home, Dad starts getting really antsy by 6 pm if we’re going out for dinner. And then, finally, there’s Dad, himself, at the restaurant.

Because Dad traveled so much for his work, he became very particular about food and service over the years. That fussiness has only gotten worse as he’s gotten older. I now cringe when he orders steak, especially here on Cape Cod (even I will tell you that, to a Midwesterner, if you want good beef here… well, maybe you’d prefer the fish). There’s a 50/50 chance any beef dish he orders will be either sent back or bitched over when the server comes by for that perfunctory “And how is everything?” check-in. And if his Manhattan comes to him in a glass that hasn’t been chilled to the point of frost build-up, it will be returned to the bartender faster than you can say “straight bourbon.”

I tell these stories to my friends, and, to them, these actions are just another example of what they see as his cranky-old-guy charm. The thing is, he’s been acting this way since he was at least my age – and it’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve perfected the breathing exercise required to keep my blood pressure below 163/95 when he does it. A part of the relaxation process is just gazing around the restaurant as Dad explains to the server just why his drink/steak/whatever isn’t to his liking, to separate myself from the entire experience.

So, last night, as Dad was instructing the waitress (aka, “young lady”) on proper cocktail-glass-chilling technique, I let my eyes float over the crowd, which prompted several observations. First, at 6:30 pm, it was pretty darned crowded. Then I started noticing a pattern – a whole lot of folks my age were sitting at table with a whole lot of folks Dad’s age, and many of them were dealing with their own little embarrassments. For example, there was the aging father having trouble negotiating the crowded restaurant and bar area, and another several tables over whose eyes were glazing over as his son repeated everything the server said at high volume to an equally aged mother. And seated right next to me, a woman a couple years older than me was buttering her 80-something mother’s bread because her mom was obviously having trouble with the sight and manual dexterity needed to complete this task on her own.

These observations got me thinking through the course of the rest of the meal at the irony of how isolating the caregiving experience can feel when there are obviously so many of us going through it at the same time. You must have noticed this – mention to someone who’s pushing 50 or older that you take care of an older parent, and the odds are pretty good they’ll have a story or two of their own. When you consider the demographics involved, this omnipresence becomes even more obvious.

The over-80 age group is one of the fastest growing demographic groups around the globe, these days. And those of us now taking care of them? We’re members of the largest population bubble this country’s ever experienced: the Baby Boom. So there are both a lot of old folks to take care of, and a lot of middle-age kids being called on to do that caring. This is why restaurants that 40 years ago faced an early-evening rush of kid-crammed station wagons now see their dining rooms filled with middle-age patrons buttering their elderly parents’ bread.

If you look around a bit, you’ll see this phenomenon everywhere – in the supermarket where a late-50s woman is walking a shopping cart next to a scooter-driving mom, and in the dentist’s office where that guy in his early 60s is answering the clipboard full of insurance questions for the father whose hearing and vision are both shot. As a society – myself included – we have a habit of skipping past older folks as we visually scan a space, so we also miss the presence of those a generation younger standing by their sides.

Maybe this is something to remember the next time I’m feeling like no one else could possibly understand how beaten down I feel by yet one more urinal spill to clean up or workday-interrupting specialist’s appointment to attend. And I bet a knowing smile shared with that cart-pushing daughter or clipboard-bearing son will make this connection even more real for both me and that other dutiful, aging child. There are a lot of us out there now and we’re all doing the best we can. And, while others might not recognize our presence, in recognizing each other we can help make all of our work just a little easier for a time.

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9 Responses to “You Are Not Alone”

Oh yeah. In the last couple weeks I’ve noticed. I was in a parking structure for my own dr appt and passed a woman struggling with her elderly father who had fallen against her while she was helping him from the wheel chair to the car. I just stopped without parking and we both helped him into the car. She was so thankful and we gave each other a hug, I think both feeling grateful for the connection and wondering how we ever get through this. A few days later I was waiting to get into my car, parked next to a woman helping her mom (with a little step stool and a boost to her fanny) get up into her SUV at the pharmacy. I just told her I could be patient, I knew what it was like. It still feels lonely though, and I think part of that is the lack of genuine connection with this person, my mom, who I care for. Sometimes there’s an inkling of it, but that connection doesn’t last. We all certainly learn a lot about ourselves going through this, don’t we.

Thanks for another great post. I had to chuckle at your description of your Dad’s “cranky old-guy charm” and how it’s not something new that he acquired with age. My late father-in-law was always arrogant and dismissive with waiters and waitresses, which could be quite embarrassing for the rest of us in the dinner party. One time, at a Benihana restaurant, he thought he was being funny by talking to the Japanese waitress in pidgin English. I sat there wishing the floor would open up and swallow me, but the waitress was unfazed. She just gave him a look and said “What’s the matter? Your mouth not work?”

Since I’ve been responsible for so much of my 92-year-old mother’s care, I have noticed others like me when we’re out and do try to assist whenever I can, even if it’s just telling the daughter or son to take their time and not hurry for my sake.

When the checker at Walmart told me I was a “good daughter,” I almost wanted to cry. I don’t always hear that from my mother and it caught me off guard to hear it from a stranger. Keep up the posts. You are definitely not alone.

I remember walking around a family restaurant with my mother in law, who had gotten restless during her own birthday dinner with extended family. I was trying to discreetly distract her out the door, but she kept interrupting other diners to ask if they were “our old friends.” Most were annoyed, but one guy said yes, I think we are, and shook her hand. That little gesture meant so much. She was a remarkably wonderful woman who lost her mind and he treated her with such kindness – he must have had his own experience with dementia.

An observation from my life: the odd personality quirks that endear us so to our friends are the very same ones that will drive our children nuts some day.

Why did you feel the other boomers helping their parents in the restaurant were handling “embarrassments”. The 4th comment above about how rare it is to be recognized as good daughter tell me something too.

They made me realize how much I’ve changed in the 30 years since I left the USA for Hong Kong. In North Asia, the greatest acts a human can show is to care for his parents; his greatest crime, lack of filial piety. When I help my mother-in-law drink tea, wipe her chin, or when she yelps or makes strange sounds, there is no gawking, this is all accepted as part of civilized, humane life. I’m constantly amazed at the restraint and kindness show to the elderly, no matter how demented they act. When I remark on it, the reply is” but how otherwise could it be? Not often, but sometimes I’ll even hear the comment “My God, that white man is civilized…” I’m glad I’ve found this blog, because I can show my friend here that there are other white men, who can act civilized… even in American itself.

Funny enough, this applies to children too, perhaps in part because they are better behaved that most american kids, but also because children are cherished by the society. Anyone sprouting “Children should be seen and not heard” in Asia would be ostracized.

Thank you for the post and for the blog. I can well relate to it all. I remember about 15 yrs ago looking at a man in his 50’s walking with a woman well in her 80’s or even 90’s, and thinking that I would be there some day in the distant future. Amazing how fast the future comes. Since then I have sat as my dad died, and walked and sat as dementia and then death took over my mom. Failure to thrive is the new term for dying of old age. I still struggle with that term – did she give up? or did we give up on her?

In my 50’s, an only child and will care for my mom as long as she needs me. The child becomes the parent is a process that I began to feel a decade now and while I accept these things and would not trade the shared intimacies and renewed friendship we now can appreciate. I must say with 5 children grown (32 – 25) and on their own…I fear living too long far more then death.